Margaret’s Song

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  There was a king in Thule,  True even to the grave;  To whom his dying mistress  A golden beaker gave.  At every feast he drained it,  Naught was to him so dear,  And often as he drained it,  Gush’d from his eyes the tear.  When death came, unrepining  His cities o’er he told;  All to his heir resigning,  Except his cup of gold.  With many a knightly vassal  At a royal feast sat he,  In yon proud hall ancestral,  In his castle o’er the sea.  Up stood the jovial monarch,  And quaff’d his last life’s glow,  Then hurled the hallow’d goblet  Into the flood below.  He saw it splashing, drinking,  And plunging in the sea;  His eyes meanwhile were sinking,  And never again drank he. “Margaret’s Song” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in “Faust. Part I.”

Finished Reading: A Time To Die

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Finished Reading “A Time To Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy” by Robert Moore. This is the well-researched and reported account surrounding the August 2000 Russian submarine disaster in the Berents Sea. The author concisely explains all the reader needs to know about submarine warfare, mechanics and lifestyle as well international tension, philosophy and chain of command. While the story is tragic both above and below the waves, the reader should not miss point we are human beings with lives that matter. There’s a time and place for politics, but compassion can be more powerful. 


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